


Glow Sticks

by Womble1



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Brothers, Fluff, Gen, glow sticks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-18 05:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28862037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Womble1/pseuds/Womble1
Summary: soppy fluff, cheering brothers up, anything else is spoilers
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Glow Sticks

Gordon had been a little off for a few days, not that you would notice at a casual glance. He was still sat there offending everyone's eyeballs with his garish shirts like always. But that was just it, he was sat, actually sat down for more than five minutes, and if not actively drawn into the conversation he was strangely quiet. Virgil noticed, of course he did, a couple of times on the last flight home he had got away with letting slip some ill thought out phrases that would usually have had his younger brother jumping with delight on the verbal innuendo slip up. Gordon hadn't so much as curled a lip up when Virgil had said “cock-jaw” instead of “lock-jaw”, something was definitely up. 

Virgil was about to test out some classic fart jokes to see if that could elicit a response when he noticed the absent minded way Gordon was rolling one shoulder. That was evidence, he knew that move, he’d seen it enough during Gordons physical rehab. His back was clearly playing up, Virgil could trust Gordon enough to know that he would be looking after the physical requirements for any back related injury. Gordon did not take chances with his back, and a quick check on the medical records saw it all jotted down and appropriate remedies in place. But Virgil knew that every time Gordon had to repair himself yet again, his mental health took a bit of a hit, and for all his “squid senses” Gordon wasn’t as good at patching that side of things up on his own. 

In short, the squid needed cheering up. Virgil thought about roping in Alan to think of a plan, but hastily retracted that thought, a bouncing teen probably wasn't what Gordon needed right now. He couldn't go to Scott, releasing the smother-hen would not help on this occasion and would only distress everyone involved. John was a bit too much of a logical problem-solution sort of person, if Gordon was medically sound then what was the issue? Grandma would try and bake a cake if called in on the project and nobody needed that. Kayo was likely to try and smack the happy back into Gordon since to her mind intensive sparring cured everything. It looked like he was on his own. It had grown dark by now and Virgil wandered out onto the balcony with his thoughts. He stared up at the moon, and let his eyes be drawn to the dancing reflection on the surface of the pool below. He expected to see Gordon in the pool even more than usual over the coming days if his back was causing him issues. Virgil never understood how Gordon didn’t get bored going up and down the same length of the pool time and again, but everyone was different he supposed. Then inspiration sparked, and for once he thought he might even have everything he needed on the island already. 

By the following afternoon Virgil was lugging a holdall full of Christmas lights he had liberated from storage and was balancing an industrial sized box of glow sticks on his hip. He industriously started stringing lights along the loungers and plants running the length of the pool. Silently praying that a launch from Thunderbird 1 didn’t undo his hard work. The sun was just starting to dip as he finished up battling with extension leads and Scott had come out to see what he was up to. Not wanting to set off the worry monster, Virgil kept it vague as just something for Gordon, and set Scott to work setting up a smoke machine that had been dug out of the Halloween supplies earlier in the day. Scott must have been looking for a distraction from reports, as he didn’t put up much resistance and started jabbing at different settings buttons seemingly at random. Soon it was all set up to Virgil's satisfaction, and he sent the snoozing aquanaut a text telling him that he was needed at the pool, hoping that the cryptic nature of the text and his own protectiveness of the pool would spur him into moving. 

Alan had joined Scott by the pool by this point, mirroring his inquisitive look. Virgil set them both to work and handed them each a large fist full of glowsticks.  
“Quick, crack that lot and fling them in there” he gestured over his shoulder to the pool and set about doing the same. 

After Grandma had got to see the glow sticks in action during a trip to London that had been marred by a Luddite induced city wide power cut, she had found 101 uses for them around the home. As such Virgil had taken to keeping a larger than strictly necessary stock of them, and at Grandma's request, branching out into a variety of colours. 

The glow sticks sunk into the water and the smoke machine fog feathreed the edges of the light across the surface of the pool. Scott and Alan finally twigged what Virgil had been aiming for. The pool looked amazing, and definitely a million miles away from its daily appearance.

“Honestly guys, if you've dropped your comms in the pool again, I am not fishing it out this time, that's what the net is for…” Gordons voice bounced off the walls as he rounded the corner, trailing off as he caught sight of the pool. His eyes seemed to grow physically wider as he tried to take it all in. The smoke was lazily drifting across the waters surface, the light from the glowsticks mingling with the dappled moonlight and the twinkling fairy lights. “Wow, what's this all in aid of?”

“Figured you could use a little cheering up and this might make all the extra lengths a little more interesting while you work out those kinks in your back.” Virgil replied, whilst fixing Scott to the spot with a glare as he could see him pick up on the back pain comment. 

For once Gordon didn't care that this was essentially “fussing”, he just let out a loud woop and launched himself in a loose dive into the pool fully clothed. At least a sudden dunking was unlikely to make that shirt look much worse, thought Virgil, as he watched his other two siblings get caught by Gordons splash. Yeah, he’d seen that one coming, why did they think he was standing on this side? Virgil's smugness was short-lived as Gordon popped back up to the surface with a spray of water which caught him right across the legs.

“This is soo cool, you've got to see it under here!”

Scott made use of his fast reflexes and, in one fluid movement, mercilessly shoved Alan in the pool “You heard him Allie, waters fine!”

The elder pair were busy laughing at the squawking Alan, and hadn't seen Gordon leave the pool and retrieve the pool net. In fact, they were only made aware of this series of events when he swung said net and bowled the pair of them in to join Alan.

“Well, you weren't going to leave me to pick all of those glow sticks up on my own were you?” quipped Gordon, finishing with an almighty cannonball landing right next to the rest of his spluttering brothers. 

“John?” EOS called John's attention away from his book “your brothers appear to be attempting to drown themselves, should I be concerned?”

“What?” John peered at the display she had helpfully produced, which showed a live feed of the pool area on Tracy Island. His panic was short lived though and curiosity took over. “What have they done now?” he mused. But the sound of laughing waylaid any fears he had for their well being. It did make sense of why Virgil had been shuffling about in the storage areas earlier, if sense was the right term for any of this. In the end he mentally filed it under “things best not to ask about” subsection “weird shit my brothers do” and was about to go back to his book when a thought occurred to him. He reached over to a different set of screens, scrolled down several pages, finally selecting the one he was looking for and hitting play. Far below, around the pool, music started playing. 

“Oh I love this song! Cheers John!” Gordons dance compilation was difficult to mistake, but never failed to get him moving.


End file.
